A couple chapters before the last excerpt I posted, Grey returns home from his “date” with Mia, which, of course, didn’t end with him dying. He realizes that he doesn’t have the power to see the future through his dreams and is extremely surprised that, in contrast, the “date” went really well. She was still with her boyfriend but seemed to lack any enthusiasm when speaking about him. Leading Grey to believe that he may have a chance after all. She tells him that she wants to do something special for his birthday (which he himself forgot about) and they plan on making dinner together. His melancholy feelings evaporate and feels a new infusion of optimism. He returns to the apartment to experience this:

—–

“What are those assholes thinking?”

Seth was over and was sitting on the couch with Nathan and Laura as I entered the apartment.

“What?” I inquired.

“Oh, never mind. We’re too far into the show to explain it now. We’re watching Dateline’s To Catch a Predator,” He said, turning in his seat to address me.

“With Chris Hansen,” Laura helpfully pointed out in an accent I assumed was trying to imitate Chris Hansen, but it came of a little more like Cartman.

The fragrantly pungent scent of pot was thick in the air and even before I sat down, Seth was offering me the pipe. I took it and sucked in a powerful lungful of smoke. I began coughing, actually it was more like hacking; I hadn’t been expecting the smoke to come in so fast.

“Oh, yah,” Seth laughed, “We cleaned the pipe.”

Between coughing fits I managed to ask, “How?”

“We boiled some water and then threw the pipe in,” Nathan explained.

“That works?”

“Sure,” Seth started but Nathan interrupted.

“It dislodges all the resin in the pipe and then we made tea from the pot water.”

“Hey,” Seth turned to Nathan and said in an exaggeratedly angry tone: “Don’t Kanye me or I’ll Chris Brown you and Tiger Woods your Mother.”

“Woah!”

We all burst out laughing.

“Nah, nah,” Seth threw his hands up dismissively, “I’m just fucking with you. I heard that on Facebook awhile ago and I’ve been dying to use it. I’ve been waiting ages for someone to interrupt me.”

I could already feel the high rippling through my consciousness; dulling everything in a wonderful glowing warmth.

My eyes were beginning to tear.

I was still kind of coughing, “You don’t have to drag that hard at all now.”

“No, you definitely don’t,” Laura chucked.

There was silence for awhile as the ambient sounds of television commercials seem to attract everyone’s full attention.

“What were you up to today?” Seth asked, halfway through the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser commercial.

“He had a date with Mia,” Nathan answered, giggling.

“Ooo, really?” Seth raised an eyebrow.

“See,” Nathan started, “I told you you wouldn’t die.”

I just nodded. I was still dangerously optimistic and I feared that speaking the events out loud would somehow curse any future dates with Mia.

The Dateline special ended and Nathan began channel surfing.

“You know,” Seth began, “I wish we could smoke music. You know, spread a little Led Zeppelin over the pot, or maybe a little Bob Marley.”

“Nine Inch Nails,” I added.

“That’d harsh your buzz,” Nathan joked.

“I don’t think so,” I defended Trent, sitting up alertly, “What about A Warm Place, or some of the other instrumentals? And most of Ghosts I-IV?”

Seth shook his head. “I think you have a chubby for Trent Reznor.”

“What? No.” I was immediately aware of my defensive stance and eased my way back into the seat cushions.

“Yah,” Laura laughed, “Yah, you do.”

“I think we take for granted that we’re at the top of the food chain,” Thankfully, Seth took the conversation off course, “Like, what must rabbits or other animals be thinking?” He changed his voice to imitate what he thought a rabbit would sound like, and it was quite humorous, “What happened to Jenny? Oh, yah, she got eaten by a wolf last week. Aw really? That’s too bad, she was hella cool.”

We all laughed at his dialogue between to two high-pitched rabbit voices.

There was a commercial on the television for some fast food restaurant.

Laura spoke up, “Props to the dude who first looked at a potato and said: ‘I bet I could fry that’.”

Everyone nodded their agreement.

“You know what though,” Seth began, “If you look at all of the problems we have physically in our society a great deal of it has to do with our diets. We as a species have lived for a hundred thousand years eating only meat and fruit and it was only with the advent of the agricultural revolution that grains and dairy became a part of homo sapiens’ diet.”

“No bread and no cheese?” I shook my head, “Man, I’d have been a terrible caveman. I live for those things. I hardly ever have fruit or meat.”

“And that’s why you’re so fuckin’ skinny and pasty, dude!”

I didn’t think that Seth meant that as an insult, but it did hurt. I was immediately silent, and so was everyone else for a long while.

“Do you guys ever get stoned and look up at the sky,” Laura broke the silence, “And wonder if there isn’t someone somewhere in some distant galaxy smoking up and looking up at their sky and wondering the same thing?”

“Wow,” Nathan began giggling.

That idea blew my mind. What if there were people in far off galaxies using mind altering drugs and wondering if there was someone else in some other far off galaxy?

“The likeliness of any extraterrestrial being anything remotely like us is almost astronomical. But yah, of course it would be astronomical anyway,” Seth laughed, “Not just another similar being with consciousness but a conscious being with access to pot.”

“Well,” Laura began to defend, “Not necessarily pot, maybe some other mind altering plant or something.”

“Out of all the species of animal ever to be on the earth, we’re the only ones who have developed a concise language which has led us to develop technology and science-“

“But there only needs to be one,” I interjected, “Who’s to say that there couldn’t be another one species of some alien life form in the nearly limitless space beyond our puny little planet.”

Seth nodded, “True.”

“If I was a cop,” Nathan interjected, “I’d yell PIKACHHUUU before I tasered someone.”

The whole room erupted in riotous laughter. My lungs began to hurt, I was laughing so hard.